Assassins Should Not Become Pastry Chefs
by empathy-and-apathy
Summary: Clint and Natasha baking. Prompt from HopelessRomanticxox. The Tower's two resident assassins attempt baking, and end up making a huge mess. Tons of snarky banter because why not


At exactly 6 in the morning on almost any given Saturday, you could find Natasha getting ready to go to the gym that Tony built in the tower. She always wanted to get in a decent work out before Clint would want to spar, but that's not to say that wasn't a good work out too.

At 7 in the morning you could find both partners in the gym, battling in a sparing match, or beating the shit out of a couple of heavy bags.

At 8 in the morning they would go to their respective shooting ranges, and Steve would take the empty place in the gym. Clint would shoot for only about 20 minutes so as not to fatigue his arms, while Natasha would shoot to her hearts content.

At 9 in the morning you could usually see the rest of the team starting to stir, if they hadn't been up all night like a certain billionaire. This certain Saturday was not particularly different than any other, but the whole team was in the tower, which didn't usually happen. Some one was always out on a mission or on a different planet.

At 10 in the morning Clint knocked on Natasha's door, startling the spy ever so slightly.

"Come in." Natasha called from her bathroom.

Clint entered his passcode and walked into Natasha's apartment. The pair spent most nights in the same bed, but living in the same apartment would draw too much attention to their relationship, or whatever the hell it was, and that was too much of a liability given their careers.

"What's up?" Natasha asked as she stepped around the corner, still running a towel through her deep red curls. Her hair had gotten longer since the Battle of Manhattan, and Clint had to stop himself from reaching out and running a hand through it.

"I have an idea for something different to do today." Clint said before the silence got too long.

"What, is lazying around playing with arrows all day finally getting boring?" Natasha asked with a raised eyebrow.

"No," Clint responded, feigning hurt, "Just wanted to change things up a bit but if you're not going to play nice..."

Natasha rolled her eyes at Clint's boyish, lopsided grin, and threw the towel into the laundry basket.

"Alright bird boy, what did you have in mind?" She asked innocently enough.

Clint cleared his throat before answering. "Don't kill me for asking this?"

"No promises." Natasha said playfully.

Clint smirked a bit. "Cook with me."

Natasha let it show how taken aback she was, something that she doesn't let just anyone see. "Clint, I don't cook."

"Don't cook, or don't know how to cook?" Clint asked, stepping a bit closer to the red head.

"Wouldn't you like to know." Natasha quipped back.

"Oh I do know." Clint said just before smiling devilishly. "I remember that mission in Rio where you burned pancakes. You. Can't. Cook." He said, stepping closer to Natasha with every accented word until they were basically nose to nose.

Natasha dropped her voice to just above a whisper. "And you think that you, an ex-carnie, can teach me how to cook?"

Clint looked up and sighed lightly before bringing his face just centimeters from Natasha's. "I'd like to give it a try." He said, before winking and closing the gap between their lips.

Natasha smiled against the kiss before wrapping her arms around the archer's neck. Clint placed one arm on the small of Natasha's back and tangled his other hand in her hair before walking her backwards so she was against the wall.

Natasha laughed lightly, causing Clint to pull back, a small bit of confusion crossing his features.

"I thought you said you wanted to teach me to cook." Natasha said, her lips brushing against his as she spoke.

"Yeah, so?" Clint asked, stormy gray eyes staring straight into light emerald ones.

"I don't know where you learned to cook, but I don't think that's it." Natasha said with a small smile.

"Oh, so now you're an expert?" Clint said teasingly before reclaiming her lips one more time.

At 10:15 that morning, Clint and Natasha found themselves in the large kitchen that the whole team had access to. They figured that not many people would want to use this kitchen at that time since they all had kitchenettes on their floors.

"So, master chef, what's on the menu for today?" Natasha said as she hoisted herself up on the counter.

Clint opened up the fridge and started looking through it. "I was thinking cake?" He said without turning around.

"So when you said cooking, you actually meant baking." Natasha commented dryly.

Clint turned to look at her before speaking this time. "Hey now, if you're going to get all particular about this, you might not want to put your ass on the counter where we'll be mixing ingredients." He responded, motioning to where she was currently sitting.

"If I can't put my ass on the counter, Где бы вы хотели, чтобы я положил его?" (_Where would you like me to put it?) _Natasha asked in her mother tongue as she silently jumped to the floor and exaggeratedly walked towards the archer.

"We're baking, Natasha, remember?" Clint stated, giving her a pointed look.

"Yeah, yeah." She responded. "So what do we need for this?"

Clint told her to get a large bowl and a whisk and other utensils that were necessary.

While Natasha gathered the supplies, Clint dug a recipe out of his back pocket and got the ingredients. The second part of that being more complicated than he had anticipated since he didn't really know where any of them were in the large kitchen. Natasha sat back and watched him run around the kitchen like a chicken without a head.

"Having a bit of trouble there?" She asked from across the room.

Clint reached for something in the cabinet he was in front of and turned around to hold it up. "Nope, this is the last ingredient. Would you like to do the honors?" He asked as he held an egg over the mixing bowl.

"It would be my genuine pleasure." Natasha replied before cracking the egg on the rim with one hand and letting the contents fall into the bowl without any shell falling in. When Clint gave her a slightly disbelieving look, she looked right back at him. "Just because I don't cook well doesn't mean I've never cooked before, Clint. I did live on my own before I joined SHIELD." She reminded him.

"Right." He said and kissed her on the cheek before turning and adding a few more ingredients into the bowl. "Now, we have to keep the dry ingredients separated from the wet ones until just before we put the batter in the oven."

"Okay." Natasha said.

They finished mixing the ingredients and put the cake batter in the oven to bake so Natasha started to put everything away. Clint stopped her as she reached for the flour.

"Whoa there sweetheart, you might want to let me handle that." Clint reached for the bag of white powder.

"Why?" Natasha asked.

"So I can do this." Clint responded before he threw flour into Natasha's bright red hair.

Natasha's face went blank and for a second Clint was honestly a little worried, but when her hand dipped into the same bag and tossing a handful of powder in his face.

"Oh so that's how it's gonna be." Clint almost yelled as he took the bag and ran to the other side of the kitchen and hid beside the fridge.

Natasha picked up and egg and hit Clint in the side of the head before he knew what was going on. "Not fair, Romanoff!"

"Who said we were playing fair, Barton?" Natasha said before rushing at Clint and stealing another handful flour and rubbing it into Clint's hair where the egg was.

"Aw, Tash, that's just gross!" Clint exclaimed.

"That's what you get for throwing flour in my hair after I already showered." Natasha countered.

"Well since you're dirty again, maybe I should help you get cleaned up." He said before he turned to the sink.

"Clint, what are you-" Natasha barely had the time to start her sentence when all of a sudden she was being sprayed with the nozzle from the sink.

An uncharacteristically high pitched noise escaped Natasha's throat and Clint stared at her. "Jesus, Tasha, you're soaked." He said as if he weren't the reason for her current state.

"No shit, Barton." Natasha deadpanned before throwing a punch at Clint, which he easily dodged.

"Easy, tiger." Clint said before making a move to pick her up. Natasha quickly jumped to the side, throwing Clint slightly off-balance. They stared at each other for a moment to assess the damage they'd done to each other. Clint noticed that Natasha's face looked mostly serious, but there was a glint in her eyes that said otherwise. Meanwhile, Clint was grinning like an idiot.

Before they could continue their food fight, they heard someone clear their throat from around the corner. Both assassins moved to see who it was, and saw Steve standing there, unsure of what to say, or what to make of the situation in front of him.

"Hey Cap." Clint greeted him like there was nothing wrong.

"Uh, hey. I heard a lot of noise so I came to see what was going on, but it seems like you guys have it, uh, under control here." Steve replied, burying his hands in his pockets.

"Am I sensing a bit of sarcasm there? Tony must be teaching you well." Clint stated, earning him an elbow to the rib from Natasha. "What?" He said, turning to her. She simply raised her eyebrow back at him.

"Clint was trying to show me how to bake a cake, and thought it would be a good idea to throw flour in my hair." Natasha clarified.

Steve nodded, not really wanting to delve to far into what assassins did in their free time. "Would you like some help cleaning up?" He asked politely.

Clint looked around and noticed that the kitchen was much more of a mess than he thought. "Yeah," He said, turning back to the captain, "I think that'd probably be a good idea."

By the time the kitchen was cleaned, the cake was done baking and Clint took it out of the oven to cool.

Clint and Natasha went to their apartments to shower, again, while the cake cooled before they could eat it.

Tony noticed the cake in the kitchen and looked around, seeing no explicit reason behind the dessert being on the counter.

"Jarvis, who baked this?"

"Agents Barton and Romanoff, sir" Jarvis responded immediately.

"She didn't poison it did she?" Tony asked, but before Jarvis could respond, Natasha's voice appeared out of nowhere.

"Don't be an ass, Stark."


End file.
